BigOl64 wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2013 at 6:54pm:


I didnt actually make any comment regarding the air-force. Likewise I didn't argue for a pacifist approach when it comes to national defence, what I was arguing for was that a green water navy would be better for Australia over a blue water one.

There is no dichotomy when it comes to Australia's defence.   

Sprintcyclist wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2013 at 10:27am:



Yes, kill people who are trying to make a better life for themselves.

That's the way.

Tell me, do you have to practice being such a brain dead moron or does it come completely natural to you?

I'm thinking it's natural.

Well, there is the key point which has been raised and which the critics of a blue-water navy (which as I have pointed out, we already have) has not been answered.

We are a nation which is highly dependent on overseas trade and in particular, overseas trade with mainland, East Asia.  Such trade, by it's very nature is seaborne.   It requires clear passage through the oceans and littoral waters of other nations, over long distances.  At the present moment, some 3/4 of the world's sea trade passages the South China Sea.

We cannot always be reliant on our "great and powerful friends" to protect that or our own sea trade for us.   All it would require is the old, still officially unresolved conflict between India and the PRC to open again, perhaps for the same reasons over unresolved territorial claims for that trade to be threatened.  Particularly if either nation decides that the best way to break the obvious stalemate high in the Himalayas by forcing the Straits of Malacca or the Bunda Strait, then we may fight it difficult to sell our minerals to China.

If we have a Blue-Water fleet, we would be in a much better position to both intervene and escort merchant shipping. 

Alternatively, if, heaven forbid, the Korean War was to resume, we might find we need to to undertake our UN commitments to the ROK as part of the collective security guarantee we signed up to in San Francisco in 1944.

Then, there is our national commitment to guarantee our security and possession of our more far-flung bits of Australia - Cocos-Keeling, Christmas, McDonald and Macquarie Islands.   If, some unimaginable at the moment threat was to emerge in the Indian and/or Southern Oceans, we may need to be able to provide naval protection to our citizens on or our claim to those islands and their resources.

If, OTOH, we only had a brown or even a green-water fleet, we would not be able to do those things, now would we?

Having a Navy that doesn't crack up, and submarines that are not so noisy they cant hear anything else would be a good starting point!

BlindFreddy wrote on Jun 19^th, 2014 at 8:55pm:


Going to need more than just one, I think to get anywhere near that table!